This invention relates generally to storage racks and more particularly to storage rack installations designed for use with a stacker crane which transports palletized loads to and from the storage rack bays.
Storage rack installations are increasingly being designed for use with more mechanized handling systems of palletized materials being warehoused, and various of these systems have been accompanied by computer control arrangements wherein a stacker crane is programmed to automatically retrieve a palletized load from a particular vertical location in a storage bay. Generally, these installations have been constructed to provide one main aisle in a warehouse with a large number of parallel side aisles extending in at least one direction from the main aisle. The storage rack installations are located in the regions between the parallel side aisles and provide storage bays facing both edges of each side aisle.
To facilitate such stacker crane operations, the storage bays are generally constructed so as to have a depth which will accommodate one or two palletized loads, with superposed loads being accommodated at predetermined vertical intervals within each storage bay, from the floor to the ceiling of the warehouse. Accordingly, the storage rack installations are normally arranged in back-to-back relation, with the open fronts facing both edges of each side aisle.
The individual storage bays are defined by vertical truss members which extend fore-and-aft (with respect to the direction of insertion and removal of the palletized loads), and these trusses support parallel, horizontal rails which extend a sufficient distance into the storage bays, at the predetermined vertical levels, to support the lateral edges of a pallet. These rails have heretofore been supported by suitable brackets attached to each side of the columns which form the trusses or in some instances have been fabricated with integral brackets that permit them to be bolted directly to the side surfaces of the truss columns. Because of the multitude of relatively short (i.e., one or two pallet lengths deep) rails which are required in a sizable stacker crane installation, the erection costs of such storage rack installations has been considerable.